


Where True Love Burns, Desire

by susiecarter



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Repression, Secrets, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 14:09:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15511572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: "He knows it," the demon murmurs. "See? He knows. But you don't, do you? He hasn't told you.""Come on," Tomas says, raising his voice over it and making himself keep looking at Marcus—who's pale, mouth pressed into a thin flat line, barely meeting Tomas's eyes.





	Where True Love Burns, Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> This is a little bit on the road with demons, GreenPhoenix, and a little bit PWP—there are never too many "demons make them do it" stories, right? Or "demons make them see themselves doing it", as the case may be. :D I hope you like this, and happy RMSE!
> 
> This is set in a handwavy space between S1 and S2, when Tomas and Marcus are roadtripping around exorcising people, and glancingly references parts of S1 (but isn't particularly spoilery for it, as such).

 

 

They're on the road when it happens, of course.

They've been on the road for months. Sometimes it feels like they always have been, always will be, like all Tomas's stationary life in the seminary and at the parish was a dream—something he invented just to occupy his mind, as they drive and drive and drive.

Tomas can't even remember the name of the town. They're in Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, or maybe they've just crossed from one to the other. He'll look it up when they get back to the truck, repeat the name to himself until it sticks. He tries hard to know these things, to make the effort: to remind himself that the boy they'd managed to keep from murdering his sister in her bed was in Milwaukee; that the man who'd clasped both their hands and looked up at them with clear-eyed gratitude, whispered, "Bless you," before he died from the kitchen knife the demon had made him plunge into his own gut, was in Aurora, North Carolina. He's found himself repeating them sometimes over his rosary, all the places he and Marcus have gone, like the two of them together are composing the text of some new incomprehensible litany.

He doesn't want it to blend together. He doesn't want to forget anyone. But sometimes—

Sometimes it feels like Marcus's face is the only one he can remember. Like Marcus is the only other person who's real, the only tangible thing, in a world that is speeding past Tomas without mercy.

Though perhaps speeding is the wrong word, given that they are two days into this exorcism and making no discernable progress.

"—and I will drown her in her own blood, I will—"

"Oh, give it a rest," Marcus snaps, weary, and Tomas knows he shouldn't but almost smiles anyway. Even after all the times they've done this, it can still strike Tomas anew, all at once: the otherworldliness of this path they've embarked on, the terrible and incomprehensible powers they've set themselves against. But when he's tired and frustrated, Marcus's patience grows short, and his irreverence is its own sort of comfort. Yes, Tomas thinks, we've dealt with your kind before and will again, and you are not exceptional. Give it a rest.

If only demons were inclined to obedience.

This one laughs, tips back the head of the woman it's clawed its way into—Agnes, Tomas reminds himself, her name is Agnes—and bellows dark amusement at the ceiling. "As if you had authority here, priest," it coos. "You are nothing—"

"Shall we have another go, then?" Marcus says to Tomas blandly over the sound of its ranting, clapping Tomas on the shoulder.

And perhaps that's why. Demons never take kindly to being ignored. Tomas can't count the number of times a demon's threats have suddenly escalated, victims abruptly dragged into the air and shaken like dolls, when Marcus's and Tomas's attention has even briefly been occupied.

Or perhaps it had always intended this, had only been biding its time, waiting for the right moment to pull this card from its sleeve.

Whatever the reason, that is the moment the demon looks at them, at Tomas, and says, "You shouldn't let him touch you, you know."

"Yes, all right," Tomas says to Marcus, as though it hadn't spoken. "I'm ready."

Heeding a demon's taunting is never a good idea. They both know this. But even as the words leave Tomas's mouth, Marcus has flinched, has pulled his hand sharply away from Tomas as though burnt.

"He knows it," the demon murmurs. "See? He knows. But you don't, do you? He hasn't told you."

"Come on," Tomas says, raising his voice over it and making himself keep looking at Marcus—who's pale, mouth pressed into a thin flat line, barely meeting Tomas's eyes.

"He hasn't told you any of it. When you let him touch you, even like that, even just a little—oh, the _things_ it makes him think of. You don't know what he wants to do to you, priest—"

"Shut up," Marcus says, harsh, looking away—because he knows that was stupid, Tomas thinks, he knows better than to reply.

"You don't know what he sees in his dreams," the demon whispers, and not all the mistakes are Marcus's, because Tomas should have known better than to look it in the eye.

"No, Tomas—Tomas, don't listen to it," Marcus is shouting, with that ragged pleading edge his voice gets in the middle of these long cases, just as he's starting to go hoarse. But where another day he would have touched Tomas's arm, shaken Tomas to pull him back—he doesn't.

And Tomas never quite means to crack his mind open. It just happens.

"But I can show you," the demon says, and then it does.

 

 

 

The visions demons are capable of dragging Tomas into are different from his dreams, his own visions, in so many ways. But in one respect, they are identical: he is so relentlessly _present_.

Of course this is a diabolical work, in every sense of the word. But it never ceases to amaze Tomas, how real it all seems. That first dream, of Marcus in Mexico City—it had been like he was there, standing beside Marcus and watching him. When they had finally met in person, Tomas had been astounded by it. He had thought some of it must have been the dream: the details of Marcus's face, the caged intensity of the way he held himself, that Tomas had been unable to look away from him. But in real life—it was the same. It had all been the same.

And, too, the first time a demon had made him see, had pretended to be Marcus and had spoken to him inside his head—he had had to remind himself every moment that it was false, because otherwise it would have been far too easy to forget.

And now—

He can _feel_ it. He can feel everything. The sweat trickling in the small of his back, the hollow of his throat; the heavy clasp of Marcus's hands, tight around his wrists. His bare chest heaving, the air he cannot quite draw in far enough.

And the hot slick head of—of Marcus's cock, where it has just breached Tomas. The strain of it, the inexorable stretch, Marcus pushing into him in a slow steady slide, and Tomas pinned there, gasping, pressed open.

The sound he makes then is three-quarters surprise; but in the body of this naked, breathless Tomas whom Marcus is fucking, it comes out—desperate, obscene. Heat floods Tomas's face, hearing himself, and oh, the irony is dizzying. Demons deceive, Tomas knows it, and this is surely nothing but a trick. A trick that will take Tomas apart, and not even in the way the demon had intended it. Because pleasure has always come too easily to Tomas, he has always drunk of it too greedily. And this, Marcus over him like this, surrounding him, holding him—this is indulgence of a kind Tomas has never imagined, almost too much to bear.

His eyes sting; he closes them. It doesn't help. Marcus is easing deeper, one hand releasing Tomas's wrist to close over his bare hip, to lift him—oh, Tomas thinks distantly, oh, God—and hold him there even as he feels himself give way a little more, a little more, taking Marcus's cock further still—

And then Marcus's thumb smooths along the curve of Tomas's ass, and Marcus presses his mouth to Tomas's shoulder and says, "Tomas— _Tomas_ , Tomas, you—my God, you are so beautiful."

He sounds breathless, hoarse. He sounds awed. He sounds bewildered and tentative and impossibly reverent, and suddenly Tomas understands.

He is and isn't pinned naked beneath Marcus with Marcus's cock inside him; he is and isn't kneeling on the floor in Agnes McNeil's house trying to save her life. He laughs, and it's a helpless choked half-breath with Marcus's mouth still against his bare shoulder and a soft pleased exhale into quiet dusty air at the same time.

And he laughs because the demon, too, has made a mistake. This isn't a trick, or not as much of one as Tomas had thought it was. The demon _is_ showing him Marcus—what Marcus dreams of, what Marcus wants. And because it is a demon, it looks at this and sees what demons see: lust, obsession. Greed. Possessiveness. Selfishness and sodomy, perversion. Sin.

It doesn't know what love looks like. It can't perceive it. And for all its unholy powers, it simply isn't capable of understanding the ways in which love renders what it touches transcendent.

It thought it was showing Tomas something horrible, disgusting—revealing some base flaw in Marcus to his gaze. However deep it managed to dig in Marcus's head to find this, it failed to perceive a greater truth, failed to understand just what it had uncovered. But Tomas is more than capable of grasping this: Marcus doesn't just want to fuck him. Marcus is in love with him.

Tomas laughs again, helpless, bright—and all at once he _is_ in front of Agnes McNeil again, and only there. With Marcus beside him, and Marcus is touching him after all, hand wrapped tight around Tomas's, gaze searching. "Tomas—"

"It's all right," Tomas says, because it's true. It's better than all right. He feels—he feels illuminated, brilliant; he looks at the thing inside Agnes McNeil, crouched there in filth and darkness, and is moved by overwhelming pity, sorrow, for all that it has lost and all that it has thrown away, for the peace and redemption it refuses to reach for, not because it isn't able but because their priceless worth is incomprehensible to it. "It's all right," Tomas repeats, and steps closer, and the demon is screaming, trying to scrabble away from him, but Tomas leans in and catches Agnes's face gently between his hands. "Ashes on the earth," Tomas says to it softly, "you are relieved. I pray for you, outcast," and its cries are terrible, deafening, except somehow they are far away from Tomas.

It's twisting Agnes's limbs, writhing—but Marcus is only a breath away, moves in to catch Agnes's arms, to hold her.

"Fallen angel, you are forgiven," Tomas murmurs, and he _means_ it, with all the blazing benevolence that has lit up his heart. "You are forgiven; you are loved," and he presses his lips to Agnes's sweaty, bloodstreaked forehead, and for an instant all is silence.

Something happens, a wave of strange pressure, so that Tomas half-expects to feel his ears pop; but they don't. And then Agnes sags in Marcus's grip, head lolling in Tomas's hands, and it's—it's done. She's free.

 

 

 

Marcus doesn't want to talk about it.

It's not hard to tell. Marcus doesn't want to talk about a lot of things, and Tomas has mapped out the minefield pretty well by now. He's learned to read what indicators there are: the tightness at the corners of Marcus's mouth, the way his gaze will flick and leap and refuse to settle, the way he scratches at his eyebrow with his thumb—an excuse to tilt his face away, to fail to make eye contact.

But Tomas is still—still lit up somewhere within himself, and it's easy not to get frustrated. It's easy to look at Marcus and smile, and hold his tongue. They rinse Agnes's face, her hands, her arms, and she wakes partway through and asks them what happened; Marcus soothes her, soft quiet words, with a gentleness that makes Tomas's chest feel too small to hold his overflowing heart inside it.

And then they go out and tell her family she's all right, and slip away before any of the McNeils can think to stop them.

Tomas doesn't bring it up once they're outside, alone. He doesn't bring it up while they walk, warm late-summer dusk turning the whole sky red and pink and gold over them. He keeps pace with Marcus, shoulder to shoulder, and Marcus keeps his eyes on the road in front of them but there's something in the set of his jaw, the way he's holding his body, that says he's all too aware of Tomas beside him.

And when they reach the truck—Tomas feels, suddenly and urgently, that this is the moment. He can't let Marcus break away from him, round the truck to get inside; even the smallest space left open between them, and Marcus will start to fill it with stones, and once he's walled this away behind them Tomas will need—C4, a bulldozer, to get it back out. And that's not what he wants.

"Marcus," he says, taking Marcus by the shoulder, and Marcus shifts uneasily under his hand but doesn't quite pull away, gaze flicking over the road and the grass and the truck but not Tomas. "Marcus, do you know what it showed me?"

Marcus laughs, a short bark with no amusement in it whatsoever. "Yeah, I got a guess," he mutters.

He's forced himself to stillness, pressed against the truck—and it's strange to see him that way, because even when he's not moving, Marcus always looks like he's about to, relentlessly kinetic.

"Tomas," he says, and then stops. He bites his lip, quick, and then says, "Tomas," again, "Tomas, I'm sorry," and his voice is scraped, halting; Tomas realizes with a jolt that Marcus's eyes are wet, that he's not looking at Tomas for more than one reason, and that's not what Tomas wanted either, not at all.

"No, no," Tomas says quickly, easing closer, sliding his hand carefully from Marcus's shoulder to the nape of his neck. "No, Marcus, don't apologize," and now Marcus _is_ looking at him, startled, wide-eyed.

And Tomas looks back at him and thinks in that instant that it's—that he looks, somehow, like Agnes McNeil. There's something in Marcus, too, lurking in his most shadowed corners; not a demon, just—just a weight. Just an anger. Just a fear, that clawed its way in there a long time ago and hasn't ever quite been cast out.

Tomas puts his palms on Marcus's cheeks, and he doesn't know what he's going to say until he hears it, his own quiet steady voice: "Ashes on the earth, you are relieved."

Marcus has gone still under his hands; his eyes fall shut, and they stay like that, breathless, for a long moment.

"You are forgiven," Tomas whispers, and watches Marcus's throat move as he swallows hard, and then Marcus reaches up without looking, eyes still closed, and wraps his hands around Tomas's wrists.

"Tomas," he says, very low, hardly a word at all.

And Tomas brushes a thumb against one corner of his mouth, the other. Along the line of his nose, smoothing the troubled lines from his brows; against the corners of his eyes, the places that crinkle when Marcus smiles.

There was a time, Tomas thinks distantly, when it would have troubled him. When he might have seen what Marcus wanted and called it sin, given Marcus counsel Marcus would have neither wanted nor needed; when he would have tried to forget about it, to put it aside, a worldly temptation to do evil.

But now he knows what evil is. He's looked into its eyes and seen what it wants, and it doesn't look anything like Marcus, standing here against the side of the truck with his eyes squeezed shut, trembling under Tomas's hands. Now, all he can think is: the vision hadn't lasted long enough for them to kiss. All he can think is: Marcus should smile more.

"You are loved," Tomas says softly, close enough that Marcus can probably feel it at least as well as he can hear it. And Marcus's eyes open, clear and unshadowed in the dying light, and he looks awed; he looks bewildered, and tentative, and maybe even a little bit reverent. Tomas smiles at him, helpless, and then leans in to press their mouths together, and Marcus makes a soft startled sound that's familiar—familiar, and even better when Tomas is hearing it for real.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> _ Where true Love burns, Desire is Love's pure flame; _   
>  _ it is the reflex of our earthly frame _   
>  _ that takes its meaning from the nobler part _   
>  _ and but translates the language of the heart. _   
>    
>  —"Desire", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge


End file.
